TODD BARRYBarry is a wickedly funny stand-up whose sotto-voce musings on the inane and the banal should be part of any humor fan's comedy diet. But you may know him best as "the third Conchord." When, on Flight of the Conchords, Bret and Jemaine's manager Murray hires Todd as a bongo player for their folk act without consulting them, the seeds of discord are sown. He's a showboat bongo soloist, and an aspiring songwriter to boot. Luckily (or not, depending on your perspective), before long Todd opts to form his own band, the Crazy Dogggz. Barry doesn't just play a drummer on TV. He was a member of mid-80s "paisley underground" garage revival band the Chant.

Putting up W’s How is it that the least popular and possibly worst chief executive in American history has inspired no lasting impersonations?

Vegas and Jungleland Paul Shaffer is a happenin’ cat. Pick an It Moment from pop culture over the past 30 years and Shaffer was there. He was an original band member on Saturday Night Live . He played hapless promo guy Artie Fufkin in This Is Spinal Tap . Disco? He co-wrote “It’s Raining Men.” And he helped David Letterman break ground as his glittery, ironic bandleader/sidekick.

Newman's own Among Shawn Levy's books is one of my favorite film bios, King of Comedy , with crazy-guy Jerry Lewis, so show-off goofy and schmaltzy, spilling all on every exuberant, excessive page.

Mr. Peepers in Mumbai Here's something Chris Kattan probably rarely hears in real life: "In Night at the Roxbury, you were awesome!" Such, however, is the encomium proffered by two young Indian fans toward the beginning of IFC's somewhat random but not altogether terrible new mini-series Bollywood Hero .

Review: Land of the Lost Even Matt Lauer deserves a better fate than to watch his career die at the hands of Brad Silbering.

Review: Saturday Night Actor James Franco’s debut feature, a behind-the-scenes look at the December 6, 2008, episode of Saturday Night Live , is kind of like Jean-Luc Godard’s Sympathy for the Devil with less music and more fart jokes.

Special delivery For the last two decades, comedian and SNL alum Norm MacDonald has been firing off on pop culture and sharing life observations with his disarming deadpan delivery and signature subtleties through a stoner Canadian accent and nasal drawl.

Interview: Steve Martin, banjo extraordinaire I remember watching Steve Martin’s Wild and Crazy Guy on a crinkly VHS tape, while sitting on my parent’s bedroom floor. I was just a little fat kid at the time. My parents were at work, as they often were, and my older sister, my only sibling, had just married her high school sweetheart and moved two miles away.

INSIDE THE TEDXDIRIGO CONFERENCE | September 14, 2011 I arrived at TEDxDirigo on September 10 feeling rather less than confident about the state of world. The tenth anniversary of 9/11 — and the awful decade that unspooled from that sky-blue morning — was on my mind.